Nerves and Common Sense eBook

But all this has been with relation to the body, and
it is the mental and moral dust of which I am writing.
The physical work for quiet is only helpful as it
makes the body a better instrument for the mind and
for the will. A quiet body is of no use if it
contains an unquiet mind which is going to pull it
out of shape or start it up in agitation at the least
provocation. In such a case, the quiet body in
its passive state is only a more responsive instrument
to the mind that wants to raise a dust. One—­and
the most helpful way of quieting the mind—­is
through a steady effort at concentration. One
can concentrate; on doing nothing—­that is,
on sitting quietly in a chair or lying quietly on
the bed or the floor. Be quiet, keep quiet, be
quiet, keep quiet. That is the form of concentration,
that is the way of learning to do nothing to advantage.
Then we concentrate on the quiet breathing, to have
it gentle, steady, and without strain. In the
beginning we must take care to concentrate without
strain, and without emotion, use our minds quietly,
as one might watch a bird who was very near, to see
what it will do next, and with care not to frighten
it away.

These are the great secrets of true strengthening
concentration. The first is dropping everything
that interferes. The second is working to concentrate
easily without emotion. They are really one and
the same. If we work to drop everything that
interferes, we are so constantly relaxing in order
to concentrate that the very process drops strain
bit by bit, little by little.

An unquiet mind, however, full of worries, anxieties,
resistances, resentments, and full of all varieties
of agitation, going over and over things to try to
work out problems that are not in human hands, or
complaining and fretting and puzzling because help
seems to be out of human power, such a mind which
is befogged and begrimed by the agitation of its own
dust is not a cause in itself—­it is an
effect. The cause is the reaching and grasping,
the unreasonable insistence on its own way of kicking,
dust-raising self-will at the back of the mind.

A quiet will, a will that can remain quiet through
all emergencies, is not a self-will. It is the
self that raises the dust—­the self that
wants, and strains to get its own way, and turns and
twists and writhes if it does not get its own way.

God’s will is quiet. We see it in the growth
of the trees and the flowers. We see it in the
movement of the planets of the Universe. We see
God’s mind in the wonderful laws of natural science.
Most of all we see and feel, when we get quiet ourselves,
God’s love in every thing and every one.

If we want the dust laid, we must work to get our
bodies quiet. We must drop all that interferes
with quiet in our minds, and we must give up wanting
our own way. We must believe that God’s
way is immeasurably beyond us and that if we work
quietly to obey Him, He will reveal to us His way
in so far as we need to know it, and will prepare
us for and guide us to His uses.